Many industrial facilities which use coke, coal, sand or other loose aggregate material must, in order to ensure that adequate supplies are always on hand for use, stockpile large inventories of such materials. This method of open stockpile storage creates the problem of atmospheric pollution by wind-borne fine aggregate particles. Additionally, working piles near processing equipment are disturbed daily due to use of material from these piles and creation of new piles. For example, in steel mills, coal piles are reduced daily for conversion to coke and, in turn, new coke piles are created. The problem has become so acute that several jurisdictions are now proposing or have instituted particle pollution standards with which stockpilers of such materials as coke, coal, sand or the like must comply. To comply, industrial users of such materials must treat open stockpiles to reduce the release therefrom of fine particulate matter as wind-borne pollution. One recently proposed regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency requires stockpilers of coal and coke to so treat the material as to withstand a wind force of 40 miles per hour.
Asphaltene-based dust control agents have been employed since as early as the late forties to control dust release from such materials. However, with the continuing rise in petroleum prices, the use of petroleum-based dust control agents is becoming or has become economically unattractive for large scale use. In addition, petroleum based dust control agents introduce air pollutants to the atmosphere during thermal operations performed on coke or coal that has been treated with such agents, hence making them more undesirable. Possible carcinogens could be produced from such petroleum-based dust control products.
It has become increasingly important to discover alternative non-petroleum-based dust control agents. However, despite the demand for such agents there has, so far as known, been no disclosure in the art of an economical non-petroleum-based agent which will effectively and economically control the release of fine aggregate particles from aggregate stockpiles, especially stockpiles of coal, coke or the like.